Sora let her arm drop and held the spyglass limply to Daemon.
He took it and focused on what she’d been looking at.
“Daggers,” he swore in disbelief. “Are those flames?”
“Unless our eyes are both deceiving us.” It turned out Daemon hadn’t misheard the wolves about enormous spheres of fire.
“There’s . . . a person inside.”
“What?” Sora grabbed the spyglass and peered through it.
Inside the orb, a silhouette marched. Occasionally, the flames parted, and Sora saw the actual woman inside. She was propelling the entire sphere forward.
Holy heavens. What was this magic? It was nothing like what the taigas could do. Every muscle in Sora’s body tensed. “The fire doesn’t even hurt her; it just obeys her. I’m afraid to look at what else is over there.”
“Me too.”
And yet a hard determination crystallized between them. It was a fragile bravery, like thin ice in a pond full of dread. But it was courage nonetheless.
Sora took a deep breath. Then she raised the spyglass to her eye again and scanned the rest of the column of people in the caravan.
Crow’s eye.
A snowball ten feet in diameter rolled after the fire orb, freezing the scorched ground as soon as it touched the dirt and leaving a trail of frost behind.
A small tornado followed the snowball, sucking up the frost. Like with the sphere of flames, there was a person visible inside. He collected the frost and occasionally hurled the snowflakes back out like icy throwing stars.
Never in any of Sora’s studies or even in the myths and legends her mother wrote had Sora heard of magic like this.
Her spyglass focused on a boy gliding on a platform of something wriggling. Sora gagged.
“What is it?” Daemon asked.
She coughed and pointed the spyglass in the direction of the caravan. “Insects,” she said hoarsely. “There’s a boy being carried by a moving platform made of insects. Just like the wolves said.”
Daemon’s eyes widened, and his skin shaded green, as if his body was warring between the shock of disbelief and the desire to throw up.
And at the very end of the procession, two massive, muscled horses carried the last of the mysterious group. Both wore dark green cloaks with hoods that hid their faces from view, but there was a sternness to them that hammered another crack into Sora’s courage.
“Maybe we should go back to the Citadel,” Daemon said. “This isn’t just harmless magic. It’s too big for you and me.”
Sora shivered, but she shook her head. “We already lost them once when we reported back to the Citadel. We can’t lose them again. There’s too much at stake. After what we saw at Paro Village, there’s definitely something bad going on.”
“Then what do you propose we do?”
She lowered the spyglass. “Stick to our plan. Follow them, learn what we can, and then I’m going to kill Prince Gin.”
Sora and Daemon waited for the caravan to pass, then followed as if they were ghosts, disappearing into trees and melting into the shadows. As the sun reached its afternoon peak, they arrived at a fork in the road. One path went farther inland into farm country, the other, out toward the coast. The fire orb at the front of the procession chose the road toward the sea.
“They’re heading to Kaede City,” Daemon said. “How convenient for us.”
Sora nodded. Maybe they could sneak past the caravan once they got closer to the city and report to the taiga outpost.
An hour and a half later, the smell of the ocean blew in from the coast, tingeing the air with brine. Kaede City was a short distance away, a small harbor town with roots in fishing and seafaring.
The caravan stopped in the sparse forest just outside the city. Sora and Daemon ducked behind a cluster of mossy boulders.
One of the cloaked figures rode up from the back of the line.
He removed his hood. The reptilian scars were undeniable.
The man who had burned down the Citadel. Who killed Sora’s sister. Who wouldn’t stop at battlefields soaked in blood in his quest to achieve the Evermore.
A furious cocktail of fear, hatred, and a hunger for vengeance swirled inside Sora. It was so potent, Daemon actually gasped as the feeling shot through their bond.
Prince Gin faced the soldiers who had gathered around him.
“My formidable ryuu,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. “I’m so proud of where we have been, how hard you’ve worked to come this far, and where we’re all headed together.”
Sora gripped Daemon’s shoulder. “What are ryuu?” she whispered.
“I think that’s what they call themselves,” he said.
The sound of the word sat like a lump of lead in Sora’s gut.
The other cloaked figure rode up beside Prince Gin. “May I say a few words?”
It was a girl’s voice. A little raspy, but definitely a girl.
“Before we enter our next target,” the cloaked ryuu said, “let me remind you that we are embarking on a course of action that will not only bring glory upon each and every one of you but also usher Kichona into a new age. Too long have the abilities granted to us by the gods lay dormant. Taigas shouldn’t just be police; we can be so much more than that. And with our new power, we’ll unleash our potential. We will make Prince Gin emperor, and we will build a new kingdom worthy of the people of Kichona and the gods.”
“Huzzah!” the soldiers shouted, as they stamped their feet.
Fear shivered through Sora’s veins.
But then, as she remembered what the prince had done to Hana, what he’d done to the Society, anger blazed through her like flames on an oil-soaked wick. Her grip on Daemon’s shoulder tightened like a vise. “The Dragon Prince as emperor?” Sora whispered. “He staged a coup, murdered taigas, and tried to kill his sister. He’ll be emperor over my dead body.”
“Well, like I said before, I’d rather we didn’t die quite yet,” Daemon said.
“Good, because I don’t plan on him becoming emperor, ever,” Sora said, grabbing Daemon’s hand and pulling him into the woods. “Come on. We’re going to beat them into Kaede City to warn the taigas and transmit the information to the Council and Empress Aki. They need to know that, without a doubt, the Dragon Prince is back.”
Chapter Twenty
The market was in full swing as Sora and Daemon entered Kaede City, looking for the taigas’ command post. The open-stall market covered several square blocks in the center of town, and it was a cacophony of activity as housekeepers, kitchen maids, and page boys hurried around, running errands.
A butcher unloaded fresh cuts of beef to display at his stall. A hawker shouted about the hot noodle soup he had for the afternoon special. And a fishmonger huffed by with crates laden with mackerel and ice, shoving past a page who was in his way.
Daemon walked up to a stall selling silk scarves and hair combs carved from abalone shells to ask for directions to the taigas’ post. The girl who worked there wore a heavy quilted coat that looked as if it had been made from every color of fabric ever invented. She had an equal rainbow of ribbons tied through the braids in her hair.
“Good afternoon,” she said in a south Kichonan accent, one that lilted softly like the ripples of a lake. “Are you looking for a gift for your girlfriend?” She tilted her chin at Sora.
“I’m not his girlfriend,” Sora said brusquely.
Her quick response was like a little stab in Daemon’s chest. But he smiled through it.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, casting her eyes downward in a manner that was demure yet slightly flirtatious at the same time. “I just assumed.”
He cleared his throat. “Right. Well, um, I was actually wondering if you could direct us toward the Society of Taigas’ command center here?”
The girl’s mouth twisted a little in confusion. Then Daemon remembered he was in civilian clothes, that hideous turquoise-and-coral shirt again. After the Paro Village incident, he and Sora had decided to switch to “normal” clothes so it wouldn’t be obvious that they were taigas. But that made it so this girl didn’t understand why he’d need to find the Society post.
He laughed as if embarrassed. “I’m just coming through Kaede City, and I heard there was a taiga outpost here. I’ve always wanted to see a real live taiga in person.”
She smiled then. “Boys. My little brother is obsessed with the taigas too. But I didn’t expect it of you. You’re so . . . strapping. And handsome.” She twirled one of her ribboned braids around her finger.
Daemon could feel Sora’s amusement through their gemina bond, the hop and skip of a smirk.
“Er, thank you,” he said, tracing the tines of a comb decorated with tiny seashells that looked like lemon drops so he wouldn’t have to watch the girl ogling him. “Do you know where the Society’s post is?”
She nodded eagerly. “By the harbor. There’s a tall wooden building, all black. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you,” Daemon said.
“Anytime,” the girl said. “What are you doing tonight? I finish work at four o’clock. . . .”